MetaFilter

The premise of this book seems dubious. Lumping in Fonda with Trump--son of a racist slumlord who was kind of a dick from the word go--just seems like trying to gin up controversy for the sake of book sales. The rise of the young urban professional class was well under way before a lot of proto-yuppie boomers even went off to college; Mad Men made that point very well. Sure, they got a lot of attention in the early-mid eighties because that's where the good-paying jobs were… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Halloween Jack at 12:02 PM on June 9, 2024

I'd like to have Hypercard again, but what I really want is for it to be 35 years ago and for me to be 35 years younger--and, given that 1989 really kind of sucked for me, that's saying something.
posted to MetaFilter by Halloween Jack at 11:38 AM on June 9, 2024

I'd occasionally visit OKC when I lived in Enid, OK for several months in the mid-nineties, and the existing 50-foot tower seems more their speed, current population spurt notwithstanding. The developer seems like the type of guy who likes to announce big projects, bask in the adulation from the locals, and then slink off to another city to run the same cycle. (There's also that disturbing detail from the link that mediareport posted about his daughters having set up a GoFundMe page to fund his… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Halloween Jack at 8:55 AM on June 9, 2024

Courtesy of Molly White's Web3 Is Going Just Great, the crypto-watch site, this is not long after an executive of The Epoch Times, associated with Falun Gong, was indicted for a crypto money laundering scam.
posted to MetaFilter by Halloween Jack at 9:28 AM on June 8, 2024

There are seemingly no foods that make you a lesbian.

[slaps roof of Subaru] This baby can fit so many Indigo Girls in it
posted to MetaFilter by Halloween Jack at 2:05 PM on June 7, 2024

A couple of things from the article stood out for me. One is that the author is uniquely qualified to address something like this:

I grew up in a home where my father—a caring physician and active church member—abused his family and often flew into violent rages, with me frequently on the receiving end. A large part of my healing from that traumatic childhood has involved advocating for domestic-violence survivors and pushing back against a culture that too often seeks… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Halloween Jack at 5:34 AM on June 7, 2024

Oof, meant "manipulative" instead of "manipulated" above.
posted to MetaFilter by Halloween Jack at 6:44 AM on June 7, 2024

Sorely tempted to say "I was sober before it was cool," but honestly, keeping out of jail was my main motivation. (Since then, I've reaped any number of personal benefits from sobriety, though.) It's nice to have more NA options, although, like Ansible, I tend to stay away from NA beers because that's dangerously close to putting my finger back on the trigger. I probably wouldn't say no to a Guinness Zero, but I've found that a nice nitro cold brew coffee is a more than adequate… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Halloween Jack at 6:43 AM on June 7, 2024

Loved the song and the article. The reghettoization of black American pop in the late seventies, with the mentioned "permitted" exceptions (e.g. Michael Jackson), especially by MTV, remains one of American culture's unprosecuted crimes.
posted to MetaFilter by Halloween Jack at 5:29 PM on June 6, 2024

I think that maybe we might consider going a bit beyond "I can't do this/you must do this" and go back to TFA and contemplate what it might signify when taken as a whole, and what it means to me is this:

It's less about recognizing the flag than raising the flag.

The last one is a transgender flag made by someone who apparently didn't know that there already was one. I've never seen it before, whereas I've seen the "main" TG… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Halloween Jack at 11:05 AM on June 6, 2024

Do they go above or below the house flag?

Depends, are they a top or a bottom? (Not sure what to do about switches, maybe some kind of spinning thing.)
posted to MetaFilter by Halloween Jack at 11:33 AM on June 6, 2024

I wonder if it doesn't mean that there'll be a flashback at some point or she's not as dead as a knife to the heart will do to a person.

My theory for how a certain character thought dead came back in the last season of The Bad Batch is that just because someone looks human doesn't mean that they are. (Also, the stab wound seemed a bit high on the chest for the heart.)
posted to FanFare by Halloween Jack at 8:35 PM on June 5, 2024

For every right-wing tough guy urging his crying son to “man up,” there’s a voice from the left telling him that to express his concerns is to take airtime away from a woman or someone more marginalized.

Really? There's an exact 1:1 ratio between the two? Does she provide the proof in the book that she's hawking via this editorial? Or is that just more both-sides-do-it-ism in America's most both-sides-do-it-ist paper? Because, as far as I can tell,… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Halloween Jack at 6:26 AM on June 5, 2024

We stigmatize male-only environments because in certain spaces, they have acted as creators and replicators of privilege and ostracism. But we are doing so before we have eliminated the toxic masculinity that necessitates them as a safety valve, and we haven’t replaced them with anything equivalent.

But with what, though? Because the whole thing about the toxic-masculinity industrial complex is that, even though it's a lie, it's tremendously… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Halloween Jack at 6:51 AM on June 5, 2024

Homer: professional assassin.

"Nobody suspects the blind man. Plenty of downtime for writing."
posted to MetaFilter by Halloween Jack at 5:33 AM on June 5, 2024

Just saw it on Netflix, and Sam Adams had it about right. It's got a budget that's practically nothing for a superhero flick, which is probably why there are only a few glimpses of the Spiders-Woman doing their thing, and the narrative is always cutting corners; Cassie goes down to Peru as if it's no more trouble than driving down to North Carolina, and we never find out what happens to Hacker Lady. (I figured that Cassie would direct the Spiders-Girl to blackmail her into getting them not only… [more]
posted to FanFare by Halloween Jack at 8:57 PM on June 4, 2024

It gives me a little bit of the Tiger King vibe

That's enough to keep me away.
posted to MetaFilter by Halloween Jack at 8:58 PM on June 2, 2024

"Man, I wish they'd invent streaming television already."
posted to MetaFilter by Halloween Jack at 8:07 PM on June 2, 2024

I liked it a lot, especially as my favorite toy when I was a kid was the G.I. Joe Astronaut figure, which came with a proportionally-sized Mercury capsule that was surprisingly accurate (albeit with a big sliding clear plastic door instead of the tiny hatch that the real astronauts had to use to squeeze into and out of the capsule). One of the reasons why I like For All Mankind is that it takes that early astronaut culture and uses it as a launching point, so to speak.
posted to FanFare by Halloween Jack at 6:25 PM on June 1, 2024

Well, it's a better finale than "These Are the Voyages...", so there's that.

But I agree with the "too many cooks" diagnosis of the series overall. I mean, all of the executive producers that the show had starting out... did Nicholas Meyer ever do anything with the series, or did they just sling him an producer credit to have his name to draw in oldskool Trekkies? And then Bryan Fuller getting pushed out, and then Gretchen J. Berg and Aaron Harberts… [more]
posted to FanFare by Halloween Jack at 9:09 AM on May 31, 2024

Just rewatched "Calypso" and S1E3 "Context is for Kings." My opinion of the former is as I stated above; rewatching S1E3 was extraordinary--it's a remarkable episode, not only where the story really seems to begin but just with the risks that it takes; people are generally unpleasant or at least cold to each other, particularly Stamets (Tilly at least apologizes for shunning Burnham when they're both in engineering), and Jason Isaacs is also great. I think that that episode… [more]
posted to FanFare by Halloween Jack at 11:14 PM on May 31, 2024

I'm glad that the actors are getting other work. And I think that one of the side effects of streaming TV having basically obliterated the old very regular broadcast TV schedule--everything built around every show having 26 episodes that started airing in the fall and finishing in the spring--is that even actors who are cast as regulars don't necessarily get regular work out of it. (Here's Adrienne Palicki complaining about being a regular cast member on The Orville, which,… [more]
posted to FanFare by Halloween Jack at 8:00 AM on June 1, 2024

Have we ever seen how strong Saru really is? (Memory Alpha says that they can run faster than 80 KPH.) "Action Spock" might have seemed ironic, but we've seen him fight and nearly kill Kirk twice; in "This Side of Paradise", Kirk arms himself with a metal bar before starting to goad Spock, and Spock bends it in the middle with one strike.
posted to FanFare by Halloween Jack at 5:55 PM on June 1, 2024

Monotropism Score: 195 / 235
Your Average: 4.15

When/where do we order jackets?
posted to MetaFilter by Halloween Jack at 4:46 PM on June 1, 2024

I liked it; I LOLed when they made a date for the sarkaress, complete with "oil bath." (Cue the porn-movie funk soundtrack as the sarkmates prepare to get oily.) Also fun to see Burnham get in the Breens' faces, a la Sisko getting into being a Klingon in "Apocalypse Rising." I doubt that we'll be going back to the future after this show is done, but I'll miss Grumpy Grandpa XO and his callback to Apollo 13 with "Failure [is] not an option.… [more]
posted to FanFare by Halloween Jack at 9:00 AM on May 30, 2024

Already seeing a lot of commentary online about how this will just encourage TFG's followers to start using the N-word in public. That's sadly plausible.
posted to MetaFilter by Halloween Jack at 8:39 AM on May 30, 2024

Fascinating.
posted to MetaFilter by Halloween Jack at 8:52 PM on May 29, 2024

Damn. What happens now when I go into pon farr?

There's always pon farr night at the Vulcan nightclub.
posted to MetaFilter by Halloween Jack at 6:33 AM on May 30, 2024

MetaFilter: semi-erect and bleeding slightly
posted to MetaFilter by Halloween Jack at 2:13 PM on May 29, 2024

Also, I'm 100% for people going for whatever body mods pleases them. On the other hand, WRT performance issues, I'm a believer in this.
posted to MetaFilter by Halloween Jack at 2:16 PM on May 29, 2024

Didn't the Guardians of the Galaxy fight Scrotox once? Or was that Lobo?
posted to MetaFilter by Halloween Jack at 9:02 PM on May 29, 2024

If you like these stories, or even a good chunk of them, then it's worth looking up some of King's notes about them, mostly sandwiched in some brief autobiographical writing, which are scattered between some of the collections, his book On Writing, and elsewhere. (King has said that he doesn't remember his childhood well enough to write a popular autobiography; given some of the other things that he's said about his childhood, and hints in some of the stories, maybe that's… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Halloween Jack at 6:41 PM on May 24, 2024

Anyone like Roadwork, from the Bachman Books? Also The Long Walk? Novellas really. Super good.

I do. Roadwork was the most realistic of the original four Bachman Books, and although it may be a bit difficult for people to really grasp what made the protagonist so furious (continuing a highway construction project while the mid-seventies oil embargo was going on), it does have that compelling drive toward the climax. And I think… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Halloween Jack at 10:56 AM on May 28, 2024

My favorite trick-taking game is Hearts, not because I play it but because it was the subject of the Stephen King novella "Hearts in Atlantis", which was about a bunch of guys in a college dorm who become so obsessed by the game that they are all in danger of flunking out, at a time (the mid-60s) which was the absolute worst time for college-age men to flunk out.
posted to MetaFilter by Halloween Jack at 10:46 AM on May 28, 2024

I'm with you, theora55; after all, it's not as if there isn't something known as "pepper sauce in a bottle" that people can use to adjust the heat upwards to their taste, without any such corresponding thing (AFAIK) that will neutralize capsaicin and turn the heat down.

(Also, side-eyeing the use of "enshittified" upthread, a word which in its own overuse is rapidly becoming youknowwhatified.)
posted to MetaFilter by Halloween Jack at 10:36 AM on May 28, 2024

CW: contains discussion of the "liver condom." Which is apparently a thing.
posted to MetaFilter by Halloween Jack at 4:30 AM on May 28, 2024

There are men without nipples?

Men can get breast cancer, so...
posted to MetaFilter by Halloween Jack at 8:29 AM on May 28, 2024

A few thoughts:

- Back when "All Summer Long" was basically inescapable, I used to think, "I'm pretty sure that Warren Zevon would hate this because he wrote this; it's catchy as hell, but why would John Mellencamp put this out?" That's who I thought did "All Summer Long" for the longest time.

- My feelings about Kid Rock are largely formed by his going to the White House when TFG was squatting in it, accompanied by… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Halloween Jack at 12:48 PM on May 27, 2024

- My guess is that they were saving the 32C Klingons for Something Really Special that won't happen now (AFAWK). Oh, well.

- That library is where I hope to go when I die. Too bad they couldn't have slipped an orangutan in there somewhere.

- I'm feeling a bit better about the Breen now that Ruhn (aka Primarch Jerkass) is gone.
posted to FanFare by Halloween Jack at 12:07 AM on May 27, 2024

The Breen are really kind of dumb; it's like the Klingons with the different houses jousting for the Big Chair only without all the stuff that make the Klingons cool and fun. And the Progenitor tech is supposed to bring L'ak back? In what way? Unless the Breen have a katra like Vulcans (and Romulans, I guess), they're basically just cloning him, right? Unless this Progenitor tech is some serious space magic. Waaaaaaaaaaaiiiiiiiiiiiiit... are they gonna end up "solving" this by turning… [more]
posted to FanFare by Halloween Jack at 12:02 AM on May 27, 2024

This was very much a TOS episode with the ancient alien tech being deified by the natives who don't understand it and the Starfleet types coming in to fix it and/or free the natives from their superstitions so that they can worship at the altar of science instead. (Something tells me that Gene Roddenberry fully expected some archaeologists in Judea to open up a nondescript tomb somewhere and find Jesus at a computer console with keys in Aramaic, muttering, "one sec,… [more]
posted to FanFare by Halloween Jack at 11:47 PM on May 26, 2024

What's the connection between natalism and autism?

If that's rephrased to "what's the connection between autism and any philosophy or worldview that is arguably fascist, proto-fascist, or crypto-fascist", then I think that an argument could be made that people on the spectrum, at least when they're younger and especially if they're bullied or neglected, tend to be attracted to stories or movements that suggest that they're not only… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Halloween Jack at 12:08 PM on May 26, 2024

I wouldn't compare this piece to Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, despite the similarity of people experiencing a convention while high. Some of that is just due to the immense cultural baggage that FALILV has; it's probably HST's biggest hit, but also kind of overshadowed much of the rest of his career. This just has a calmer energy to it, and even the most unrealistic element of it--the hotels under construction collapsing in series, like dominos--seems like it wouldn't… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Halloween Jack at 11:18 AM on May 26, 2024

I think Abraham Lincoln said “we’re better than that” in one of his last postings on the internet. Or maybe it was Martin Luther King.

Pretty sure it was Albert Einstein, quoting Mark Twain (or maybe Nietszche; I often get them mixed up because Twain and Nietszche were roommates at college).

I disliked SSM without seeing it because the whole idea seemed trite. Like a lot of people, I think, I tended to think of fast food as… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Halloween Jack at 8:43 AM on May 25, 2024

But from a technical point of view, if he was already an alcoholic before the project,and he remained an alcoholic after, how would that change the results of the month of eating fast food?

To expand on what Gygesringtone said, his alcohol consumption would have affected both the reliability of his self-reporting and also lowered his inhibitions, as alcohol generally does. Tom Naughton, who directed the response documentary Fat… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Halloween Jack at 10:48 AM on May 26, 2024

I mean, sure, we're all sophistos and in on the joke. But Chariots of the Gods? was a massively popular book, despite its author, Erich von Däniken, having multiple convictions for fraud and embezzlement, and its editor, Wilhelm Utermann, having literally been a Nazi. I sure was impressed by it when I was a kid. Simply stating an idea isn't really mockery unless there's some context.
posted to MetaFilter by Halloween Jack at 9:09 PM on May 25, 2024

merriment cites my two favorite parts of the film. Patrick Doyle's "Non nobis, Domine" was the perfect way to end the Agincourt scene, and has been performed many times in public beyond the film. And the great thing about casting BRIAN BLESSED as Exeter is that, for once, he dials it back considerably... but you can feel that power being held in check. When the Dauphin tries to get in his face, BLESSED just looks at him like, boy, I take shits that are bigger and meaner than you, every… [more]
posted to FanFare by Halloween Jack at 8:55 AM on May 25, 2024

Not sure why this one has made the news.

Do they usually get to the point of announcing a foreclosure sale?
posted to MetaFilter by Halloween Jack at 2:42 PM on May 24, 2024

Did anyone else think that "The Jeweler" was supposed to be the Mole Man? Having him being a denizen of NYC's underground tunnels is a clever way of getting around having to create giant subterranean monsters, but it's also pretty derivative of Batman Returns' Penguin.
posted to MetaFilter by Halloween Jack at 1:45 PM on May 24, 2024

Best is to never be that person in the first place, but failing that the only right answer is to own up to your mistakes and become a better one.

Said it before, I'll say it again: I am super-happy that social media didn't exist (if you don't count random BBSes) when I was younger.
posted to MetaFilter by Halloween Jack at 7:25 AM on May 24, 2024